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The Best of Simon and Kirby – Since I love all things Jack Kirby, I had to check this out, as it is all early Jack Kirby art, and hardly any of it is guys-in-tights superhero stuff, rather samples of his 1940s work with Joe Simon on superhero titles (Captain America fights the “Red Skull”, then there’s The Vision, the Sandman, the Stuntman, Fighting American, the Fly, Blue Bolt), science fiction stuff, war stuff, romance titles (!!?!?!?!?!?!), crime, westerns, horror and “sick humour”, for publishers as diverse as Archie Publications, Centaur Publications, Charlton Comics, DC Comics, Fawcett Publications, Fox Features Syndicate, Funnies Incorporated, Harvey Publications, Hillman Periodicals, JC Penny Company, Mainline, Marvel Comics, National Periodical Publications, Prize Comics, Timely Comics, Pulp Magazine, US Coast Guard Academy, Your Guide Publications. Nice!

The book starts off with long essays by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s biographer Mark Evanier, laying out the zeitgeist of what these guys had to do to build the comic industry in the 1940s when there was a war on. The sole recognisable character, and maybe the only Marvel comic in the whole collection, is the first one, and it shows Captain America fighting a “Red Skull”, who turns out to be… a guy in a Red Skull disguise. It’s a pretty silly story, with some so-so action and bizarre motivations (why does a traitor need to wear a costume to kill people – so that the last thing that they see before they die is a red mask? The production is a bit sketchy, especially the lettering, which never really matches up (in some cases they use multiple fonts/embellishments. Comics have come a long way since. However, The Vision story is pretty cool as there’s a lot of mystery as to who The Vision really is, which combines well with a tale of a powerful werewolf under the spell of a beautiful she-werewolf the victim found while on a mission in Tibet. Sandman fights a rampaging “Thor”, and Kirby uses some really strange layouts (they look great, though – just hold the page from you at a distance to take it all in! The Stuntman story is silly, with our hero confronted by the famous Hollywood actor/part-time detective (??) Don Daring (!!) who is his lookalike (!!!!), and they go on a murder case together. Except that they’re both too stupid to solve the mystery (which doesn’t make sense anyway). Oh well. The Fighting American adventure with Doubleheader is probably one of the better stories, as its full of really snappy dialogue. Also some very creative layouts.

In the science fiction chapters, Ken Kurage’s adventures with the evil tree people of Uranus (enter also a beautiful Amazon from Mars). The lettering in this one is particularly funky. Blue Bolt’s adventure with the evil Green Queen is kind of cool. In another tale astronauts capture the Soviet Sputnik satellite, then find a strange organic object inside a space coffin. Not really sure what that one was about.

In the war stories, there’s an incomprehensible Boy Commandos story about midget millionaires who were exempted from service forming their own militia and taking on Agent Axis… couldn’t make sense of it. “His Highness The Duke Of Broadway” is a very good story about a nuclear bomb in Manhattan. Another story called Booby Trap, set during Korean War fighting, has a lot of realism. It’s scary how the troop of 12 is set upon by enemy soldiers and whittled from 12 down to three.

The romance tales (a genre which apparently Simon and Kirby invented and were very successful with). “Weddin’ At Red Rock” has a pretty interesting twist ending – a beautiful girl tricks the outlaw who has claimed her into marrying her ?!??). “The Savage In Me” is about a missionary girl who falls in love with a rough American adventurer in China (shades of The Sand Pebbles and Romancing The Stone) that includes some pretty questionable roughing-up. In some way, these stories were the most interesting in the collection as I’ve defnitely never in my life read romance comics.

The crime stories were interesting too – one is about a marijuana addict who tortures and kills women when he can’t get his reefer that is supposedly based on a true story (lack of reefer makes people violent? can it be? maybe a sorta “non-reefer madness” or something…). Lots of interesting sexy violence here. Great layouts – one page combines two round panels with four square panels, a real work of art. There are also two stories that depict the lives of Ma Barker and her family of criminals, and Al “Scarface” Capone. These are also dripping with violence, especially the various summary executions that both carried out eye-to-eye.

That’s followed by tales from the west, including one about gun-runners trying to arm the natives against the white man that involves crazy stunts, as well as a cool Bullseye tale of “Major Calamity”, the sole survivor of two Indian raids who is needed to save a town from marauders. Great conflict there!

The horror comics are really cool too, including covers for “The Strange World of YOUR DREAMS (We will buy your dreams)” and tales like “the Scorn of the Faceless People.” Here comic book psychologists interpret the dream of a guilty salesman who bit off more than he could chew in the rural countryside. Here we see for the first time the kind of nutty Jack Kirby dungeon sequences that he’s so well known for. Great composition and creative use of panelling – one page has panels in the top left and bottom right corners, with the middle a big splash drawing (this story contains both horror and romance). This is reinforced with one of the “Your Dreams” stories, depicting a woman’s torment as she dreams of being locked in a tower. The commentary tries to make this nightmare a positive thing, but… nice try.

The final chapter of “Sick Humor” tries to show the funny side of Joe and Jack in titles like Sick and The Psycho News Form Here To Insanity, but… it really didn’t seem funny at all.

Here are some cool visuals from the selection.

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